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How to drastically increase the life of your smartphone battery

There are certain things you can do that will help your smartphone’s battery last for the entire day and require you to charge it less. What you have to remember is that different actions, apps, features, and settings on the phone will use up the battery at different speeds, so knowing what does what on your device is vitally important.

Stick to these simple tips and your phone will stay powered up much longer:

Lower your screen brightness

This is probably one of the most obvious and quickest changes that you can make in terms of saving the battery on your phone. It takes a lot of power to give you a super bright display and the chances are you won’t need it most of the time.

Switch to Wi-Fi when you can

Using 3G (or even worse, LTE in the newer phones) is a massive suck on battery life. If it’s possible, turn off 3G (or LTE) and switch to Wi-Fi. You won’t be able to do this all the time, but it is a useful trick if, for example, you are traveling or in a place where you can’t take calls but do have Wi-Fi.

Turn off Wi-Fi (when you’re not using it)

When your phone’s Wi-Fi is activated, the device is constantly looking for new networks and, as a result, sucks life from your battery. Turn off Wi-Fi and only switch it on when you are going to use it or look for a network.

Only use location apps when necessary

Location apps are a massive suck on battery life and rather insidious, because they run in the background so you might not realize they’re on. Typical location apps that you might have switched on include Facebook, Twitter, Maps, and Instagram.

Switch off notifications when possible

Getting notifications from your various apps is a great way to keep you up to date, but new tweets, Facebook updates, and game alerts are sucking your battery because the phone has to fetch those updates on a constant basis. Check your notifications and keep the ones that are 100 percent necessary. You can still check your notifications manually.

Use Airplane Mode

Despite the name, you needn’t use this on airplanes only. This function shuts down everything on your phone that uses battery. You might switch this on in meetings, the cinema, or other places where you won’t use your phone.

Turn off Bluetooth

This one is simple, because so many people have their Bluetooth switched on even though they’re not using it. Just switch it off and turn it back on for one of the very few occasions when you’ll need it.

Check email less often

Every one of us seems to be addicted to the little red notification indicating there’s new email; however, by constantly checking those emails, you are sucking the life out of the battery. You can set up your phone to fetch your emails every once in a while. On an iPhone, for example, you do this by going to Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Fetch New Data, Select Your Preference.

Close background apps

Apps that are running in the background are doing a lot of work and draining your battery without you even realizing it. On the iPhone, double tap your Home button, and then tap and hold on an app icon to initiate jiggle mode. Tap the red “X” to completely kill apps running in the background.

Turn off vibrations

Vibrations are killing your battery, and chances are you can live without them. So switch them off or only have vibrations for specific actions or notifications.

Converge has created this docking station that places your electronics on a nice display, letting it blend in with the furniture. With the ability to charge the majority of UBS devices (including the Blackberry and Nook), Converge’s stand offers four USB outlets so you can add life to your devices in bulk.

Acting as both a protector and a battery charger, Kensington’s product extends your iPhone’s lifespan by adding a extra hours of charge: four hours of extra talk, five hours of video, and 22 hours of music. The cover slots in and provides a card stand so you can have hands-free FaceTime chats, as well.

This is by far the most expensive item on this list, but if you’re looking for bulk iOS charging, you’ve come to the right place. The PowerSync is able to store, charge, sync, and secure up to 10 iPad devices at any one time. There are integrated LEDs showing the charging status of all your iPad devices and there are two USB ports on the back, one for connecting to your host computer and the other for daisy chaining up to three trays to your Mac for syncing with iTunes.

The charger is a little expensive, but what you get is a device that lets your devices (smartphone included) charge while you’re on the move. You simply fill up the fuel compartment with water and you have a new battery pack ready to go. Unfortunately, this charging accessory is only available in Europe.

Niall Harbison is co-founder of Simply Zesty, where a version of this story first appeared.